The Socialsense blog has been created to support the SACE Society and Culture classes at Thebarton Senior College (TSC )in South Australia. It contains resources, thoughts and learning materials for the courses. SACE Society and Culture courses have been designed to provide students with the opportunity to explore, analyse, consider and discuss the complexities and interconnections of our societies and cultures in the Australian and Global context.

Documents which have formed the basis of our present day concept of Human Rights in the West.

The demand for Human Rights has not come from nowhere! Since a period of history called the Enlightenment (18th Century), individuals and countries in Western Nations and after 1948, the United Nations have been working at writing down in formal documents (and hopefully binding - but not always) what the rights of Humans are. That is not to say that other societies through history have not had a go at discussing and documenting the rights of their people but generally the three documents below are fundamental to the development of what we call Human Rights in 2012 around the world. This also does not mean all nations must or do follow these documents. As we all know many countries ignore the sentiments and expectations for Human Rights outlined in the documents. Only last week Australia's foreign Minister, Bob Carr met with the Indonesian Prime Minister to talk about the perceived abuse of Human Rights in Indonesia.

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

“Whereas recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world …”

A Thinkpiece for class

A related issue to this posting is that Australia does not have any type of Declaration of Human Rights as part of the Australian Constitution. Some people say that we should write such a document and make it law.